Hey folks, Harry here. Right before my trip, the news that DONNIE DARKO was being made brightened my life tremendously. You see... I love this script, but it's an incredibly hard sell... nearly impossible for any studio, unless the script happens to fall into a studio head's hands and he/she happened to of loved it as much as I did... and then poof it happens. That was not the case with DONNIE DARKO. Richard Kelly... a kid, a 25 year old wandering around the streets of Hollywood, script under his arm... taking meetings, pitching this and that... Then finally he finds a pair of guardian angels and poof... all works out. This is one of those stories that gives ya faith. If you have material that people love... if you take your time, don't conform the material, find the right people that want to make it, then get it going. In this case... well, I'll let Richard tell ya. It should put a smile on your face....
Hey Harry... Richard Kelly here.
Thanks again for mentioning my project (Donnie Darko) on your site. It's been a long and crazy road bringing this twisted little project to the big screen.
The biggest challenge has been explaining to people what genre of film this is going to be. I guess we'll call it a period 80s/coming of age/science fiction/Hitcockian ghost thriller/ensemble suburban satire... about the death of the Reagan era... an American family torn apart... a young genius touched by the hand of God in a 28 day oddysey of self-destruction/self-discovery... Uhhhh... does that sound pretentious? And I haven't even mentioned the bunny rabbit.
I have no doubt that this is going to be... a doozy to market.
We don't have a distributor yet and we don't care. We're just going to make a very confidently fucked up little movie that defies classification.
When you're a 25 year-old nobody and you walk into a room full of suits and say these things... make these demands... well... they pretty much tell you to fuck off... which they did to me for about a year and a half.
But... when you walk into a room full of suits and say these things with Jason Schwartzman and Drew Barrymore attached... they say: Can we give you five million... a contractual R rating... and 2 hour 5 minute running time?
And then you say hell yes. Where do I sign?
Thank God for cool fucking movie stars
Richard Kelly
